Apple Patent Suggests Siri-Like Virtual Assistant for OS X

It's always fun to watch people who treat Apple's Siri like a best friend. You know who we're talking aboutthat one friend who uses Apple's digital assistant for just about everything. Siri, set the timer for 10 minutes. Siri, what is my friend's address? Siri, read my last email. With these people, poor Siri should get paid overtime.

Or, if Apple's latest patent application results in a successful product launch, perhaps Siri should find a new job entirely. According to a report from Apple Insider, Apple has applied for a patent that covers a desktop version of a Siri-like virtual assistant.

"Methods and systems related to interfaces for interacting with a digital assistant in a desktop environment are disclosed," reads the patent application. "In some embodiments, a digital assistant is invoked on a user device by a gesture following a predetermined motion pattern on a touch-sensitive surface of the user device. In some embodiments, a user device selectively invokes a dictation mode or a command mode to process a speech input depending on whether an input focus of the user device is within a text input area displayed on the user device."

"In some embodiments, a digital assistant performs various operations in response to one or more objects being dragged and dropped onto an iconic representation of the digital assistant displayed on a graphical user interface," it continues. "In some embodiments, a digital assistant is invoked to cooperate with the user to complete a task that the user has already started on a user device."

In other words, one should theoretically be able to activate Siri by speaking a particular activation phrase, performing a trackpad or keyboard gesture, or even clicking on a Siri icon to fire up the assistant. In Apple's example on the patent application, a user would draw two circles on a Macbook's trackpad, which would slowly summon Siri into focus.

Unlike the iOS version of Siri, the OS X iteration of the digital assistant could also be able to decipher the context of one's keyboard and cursor activities. For example, a user could drag and drop a number of files onto the Siri icon and ask the digital assistant to sort or merge them all into a single folder on the hard drive. Selecting a batch of text and asking Siri to copy it, while not that much faster than Command + C, might also be possible.

Apple's patent also suggests that an OS X iteration of Siri could be used to find related information in the background while a person is working in a foreground application.

"For example, while typing in a text editor, a user may want to access a picture or piece of information from the Web. Invoking a digital assistant by voice to perform this secondary task saves mouse clicks and allows continuous focus be paid to the text editing task at hand," AppleInsider said.

In May, Google rolled out hands-free searching to all Chrome users, following a successful beta test earlier this year.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
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